CA and VA State Returns MFS with MFJ Federal

[bkbond]

I live and earn all of my income in CA, and my spouse lives and earns all of her income in VA.

We've filed our joint federal return easily enough as well as her VA return. Since I earned no income in VA, that state required her to file MFS and it was as easy as making a dummy federal return with her documentation to ensure that the input for her state return, which we printed for paper filing, is all correct.

Working on the CA state return is a little trickier, though. Since we're married, do we have to consider her VA income as part of our overall income on the CA return? If so, and she's already paid her taxes in VA on that income, will CA simply ignore her income? Can we just leave it off as my income only was earned in CA and hers was earned and taxed in VA?

I filled out CA taxes with a dummy federal like we did for her VA, but I wanted to make sure omitting her was OK because the community aspect of CA income rules is confusing us.

[KeshaH · Accepted solution]

Since Virginia isn't a community property state, you won't need to include any of your wife's income on your California return.